


in the air

by sullypants



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:26:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 10,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23335342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sullypants/pseuds/sullypants
Summary: a collection of tumblr prompts.
Relationships: Betty Cooper & Veronica Lodge, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones, Jughead Jones & Veronica Lodge
Comments: 90
Kudos: 56





	1. memory/secret

On a dusty July afternoon, in a fit of boredom at the lack of socialization she’s experiencing—given how many of her friends are on trips with their families, or are working internships, or scooping ice cream cones—Betty spends a full afternoon poring over more than a decade’s worth of diaries. 

They’re gathered together in a box kept at the back of her closet. Her mother, perpetually cleaning and a natural snoop, appears to have left it undisturbed, or else covered her tracks especially well.

The oldest is a small sparkly pink plastic number, that locks with a key she’d carefully looped onto a colorful piece of embroidery floss (itself a leftover from a youthful crafting phase) and tied to the lock’s well-used clasp. 

Inside she finds her seven-year old self, so familiar and yet much a stranger at the same time. 

She writes about adopting Caramel, about arguing with Polly over names. There are pages where she details helping Archie with reading; there’s a carefully kept list of the books they read together, of the books she read with Jughead, of the books she read by herself (Jughead read one _Felicity_ book at her insistence and had quit, arguing it contained more about making apple butter than anyone wanted to know.) 

She writes about losing both of her front teeth within a two-week span; about how Jughead had lost his a few weeks earlier and Archie, feeling left-out, had been so excited that a reckless, face-first tumble down the slide during recess had finally knocked one of his own loose. 

They’d collected themselves in the garage later that day, and there Reggie had joined them, freshly escaped from his afternoon piano lesson. It was Reggie who’d convinced Archie to tie his tooth to a piece of string, who had attached the other end of the string to the garage’s side door—and Reggie who’d put his hands behind his back, masking his face with his most innocent expression, when Mary had come running out of the kitchen at the sound of Archie’s yelp. 

The next day at school, Archie proudly showed off his new gap, and the single dollar bill he’d found under his pillow that morning. 

A voice jumps her out of the past. Jughead stands in the door in a t-shirt, hat peeking out from the back pocket of his jeans.

“The she-devil said you were up here. I don’t think she wanted to let me up, but she and your dad seemed distracted by whatever they’re working on.” 

He flops onto her bed, craning his neck over the edge towards the book in her hands, and raises his eyebrows in question.

“What you got there?”

She ignores his question, because she’s remembered what her diary doesn’t say, what she knew but didn’t fully understand as a child.

“You never ruined the Tooth Fairy for Archie.”

His eyebrows scrunch together in confusion. “What?”

She closes the diary, locks it carefully, and tucks it back into the box, and standing up, dusts off her lap.

“You didn’t tell your parents you lost a tooth, so you never got anything.”

Realization dawns on his face and he props himself on his elbow to look up at her. He opens his mouth, surely to respond with some snark, but ends up only huffing a laugh and snapping it back shut. 

She cocks her head and narrows her eyes at him, nods her head towards the door. 

“Wanna grab a milkshake and walk to the river?”


	2. fight/future

They’re about half an hour out from Riverdale when things come to a head.

Despite their spoken intention to drive in shifts, Jughead had merely shrugged when she suggested they pull off the highway to buy coffee and trade places. It’s his refusal of coffee that rings the alarm. 

They’re sat in preoccupied silence when he bursts out:

“Are we always gonna do Christmas at your parents’ house?”

She’d been staring out the window, but at this her head whips around to face him with wide eyes. His hands are at ten-and-two and he doesn’t meet her eyes. 

“You’ve always said you didn’t want to go to Toledo, I—”

He shakes his head emphatically. 

“No, no—I don’t want to go to Toledo, and dad’s gonna keep flying out to Jellybean every year since it’s the only chance he really gets to see her. I’m talking about staying in the city.”

Suddenly she sees the rest of the drive and the evening to follow rolling out ahead of her: her parents, performative; Jughead, quiet; Polly, oblivious; Jason, preoccupied with his children. She feels a curl of something sharp spike up between her lungs, latching onto her heart and squeezing. 

She takes a deep breath, and realizes she’s getting ahead of herself. This can be salvaged. She can fix this.

“Jug, I know my parents are a lot, and Polly and Jason and the twins are—”

Jughead turns briefly to look at her and seems to realize something, shakes his head again. 

“I’m just talking about...you know.” He removes his hand from two o’clock and gestures between them. He seems to think for a moment before continuing. “ _Our_ holiday.”

Betty reminds herself she doesn’t _need_ to jump in and fix this. This is just a moment, just an uncomfortable moment where they don’t seem to be on the same page, where they seem to be having two different conversations. This is a busy time of year. Everyone’s on edge. She takes another breath.

She’s silent for a further moment, before Jughead seems to gather conviction. 

“ _Our_ Christmas. _Our_ family.”

Oh. 

“Oh,” she says. “I...hadn’t thought about that. Do you think about that?” She gives her head a shake. “Nevermind, right, of course you’re thinking about it, you brought it up. Oh. Well—”

Jug’s hand lands on her knee, his eyes sliding to her own and then back to the road.

“Hey,” he says softly, with a squeeze of his hand, “not something we need to figure out today, or this week. Just...starting the conversation.” He raises an eyebrow and the gesture feels light-hearted. He smiles at the road before him.

Betty watches him as he drives, slides her hands over his, and interlaces their fingers. She nods to herself, and says aloud, “Okay.” 


	3. colors/key

The bar is dark, but as she scans the room for the producer she’s due to meet, Josie’s eyes are drawn by a flash of bright gold against cobalt blue.

A double-take and a closer look seem to confirm that it is indeed Betty Cooper, but Josie hardly recognizes her. 

Betty was always very pretty, but Josie’s not sure she’s ever seen her look like this. 

This Betty, six years removed from Riverdale, is—Josie’s not sure there’s another word for it—sultry; as sultry as the smoky eye that seems to make her green eyes pop, even in a dimly-lit room. 

To find her in a midtown hotel bar best known for business meetings and (so Josie’s heard from a friend) _business_ meetings, feels like a kind of cognitive dissonance. 

But they graduated from high school six years ago. Last she’d heard, Betty and Jughead had gone to Yale, gotten married, graduated, and were living _whatever_ kind of life two people who’d been together seemingly _forever_ and were named Class Couple in the RHS yearbook ended up living. Who knew what that was? She’d heard something about grad school, but it was beyond her attention. Josie had always struggled to put a pin in that relationship; she couldn’t quite clock it. But hopefully _she’d_ changed since high school, so presumably Betty has, too. 

Perhaps that explains the man Betty sits next to at the bar, the one she seems to be leaning towards. Her legs are crossed, and her foot bobs gently; Josie can’t quite tell, but she thinks Betty’s tapping the toe of her heel softly against the man’s calf. This man is decidedly not Jughead. 

That intrigues, and since the producer seemingly isn’t here yet, Josie starts to make her way forward, and _knows_ Betty spots her by the way Betty’s kohl-rimmed eyes ever-so-slightly widen over the man’s suited shoulder. 

Before Josie realizes what’s happening, there’s a firm grip on her elbow, and a man with his head ducked is mumbling something about her table being ready. She’s nearly man-handled, but before she can put good use to the kind of physical intimidation one innately develops from two year’s worth of living as a petite woman in Washington Heights into pushing him off her, she finds herself nearly dragged further into the crowded bar. 

“We are in the middle of an operation, Josie, we nearly have this one,” Jughead hisses at her. 

“The _fuck_ , Jughead, what is—” He cuts her off with the wave of a hand.

“It’s a honeypot, she’s about to get his hotel key and then we have him.”

Josie shakes her head in confusion. “A hon—I thought you guys were in, like, grad school?”

He casts a covert glance over his shoulder, but Betty and the man in the suit don’t appear to have noticed them. Jughead nods down to his side, where Josie notices the camera he holds low.

“Yeah; this is just a side hustle. PI for hire.” He raises his eyebrows and nods subtly towards Betty.

Jughead reaches into his pocket, and hands Josie a small white business card:

“Cooper/Jones, Licensed Private Investigators.”


	4. puzzle/blood

She wakes from an afternoon nap feeling less than rested. 

It’d been one of those deep, unsettling naps, full of odd dreams that bled into one another; the kind of nap you wake from feeling too warm. The light in the bedroom has changed, you’re confused about what time it is, what _day_ it is. 

But then—self-isolation has meant she’s unsure of what day it is everyday. Everyday is like Sunday: oddly quiet, and covered with a layer of uneasy dread towards the metaphorical Monday they face. 

Thus, she’s already in a funk when she shuffles out of the bedroom, only to find the jigsaw puzzle that she’d and Jughead had been tinkering at for three days, _together_ —completed.

She’s _pissed_. 

“Hey, Betts.”

Hands on her hips, she turns to face Jughead as he emerges from the kitchen, fresh mug of coffee in hand. He stops short when she catches his eye.

“Alright? You look like you’re out for blood.” 

She says nothing, glaring at him as he moves to the couch, slumps down, taking care to keep his mug level, and crosses his ankles over one another atop of the finished puzzle. She exhales a huff with—she’ll admit—some slight exaggeration. But they’re isolated and bored, and she’s anxious. The puzzle had been a pleasant distraction, a means of passing the time and taking a break from both the uncertainty of the larger situation and more mentally taxing efforts, like work, or reading, or even the re-binge of _The Good Place_ they’re in the middle of. 

“You finished it.”

He grimaces an apologetic smile. 

“I know. Sorry,” he shrugs, and there’s a note of helplessness in the motion. “ _But_.” He pulls his feet off the coffee table, places his coffee carefully on top of the completed puzzle, and stretches across the couch to reach for a box on the side-table.

He holds it up for Betty to see. It’s a 1000 piece puzzle; Betty recognizes a Roz Chast _New Yorker_ cover. 

“The mail came,” says Jughead. He gives the box a gentle shake, and Betty hears the jigsaw pieces shuffle within.


	5. blanket

The blanket’s a fleecy thing, deep red and dark forest green tartan, but so old the colors are hard to distinguish in poor light. 

For much of Jughead’s childhood, it rests across the back of the couch in the trailer that is his childhood home. It’s always been there, since before Jughead had memories.

When Jughead is six, his mother goes to the hospital, and returns with a smaller, brighter blanket, and a baby with a small tuft of black hair wrapped inside it. Jughead is at first curious, but then decides he would rather build a fort between the couch and the corner of the trailer, and uses the tartan blanket for his roof. 

When Jughead is ten, he comes back from an afternoon spent at the swimming hole and a bad experience with some leeches. His father hoses him off with the cold spray of the trailer park’s communal gardening hose. 

His mother wraps him in the blanket, rubbing the fabric up and down his arms to stop the chill of the cold water.

When Jughead is fifteen, his mother leaves. She takes his sister; she leaves everything else.

When Jughead is sixteen, he unzips Betty Cooper’s pink dress. Later, he takes the blanket off the back of the couch and wraps it around her shoulders to keep them from shivering in the cold of the trailer. 

One day, they take the blanket outside, and lay it next to a small campfire. Betty sits upon it and builds small cairns with stones from the riverbed. For a long time the blanket will smell like smoke, and Jughead will sometimes bury his nose in it to remember this moment. 

When Jughead is seventeen, his mother returns, and soon the blanket rests across the back of a new chair, in a new home. 

The blanket doesn’t get much use in the new house. One day, he takes it off the back of the chair and carries it outside.

He beats the dust from it, averting his head, and lays it out in the backyard of the Andrews’ house, adjacent to several other blankets. He splays his limbs across it, Betty settles herself between his thighs, and he leans his chin on her shoulder. They watch the fireworks, they light sparklers. 

A stray ash lands on the blanket, but Jughead stomps it out before it can burn through. It leaves a small black mark.

When Jughead is eighteen, he folds the blanket into a bankers’ box, and carries it into his dorm room. It hangs over the end of his bed, but he doesn’t give it much notice until Thanksgiving, when Betty shivers, and again he pulls it over both their shoulders. 

When Jughead is dead, Betty uses the blanket to insulate several framed pictures and more delicate objects into another cardboard box, and carries it back to Elm Street, her eyes racooned from tears. 

When Jughead is nineteen, he takes the blanket from where it lays across a chair in the corner of the room he shares with Betty, packs it back into a box. He unfolds it again once they are in Connecticut, lays it across the foot of the bed. 

By the time Jughead is twenty-six, the blanket lives at the top of the hall closet of a one bedroom apartment, brought out when there are guests sleeping on the couch, or when the radiator is on the fritz.

When Jughead is thirty-three, the blanket has been designated an outdoor object only. Every week, occasionally several times a week, it comes down from yet another new closet shelf, is carried several blocks to the park, and laid out onto the grass. There Betty and Jughead sit, and a small child with wisps of dark hair inches alongside them on his stomach, and rests his cheek on the softness of the wool when he is tired. 


	6. future/past

Betty is twenty-seven when she gets married.

Betty is six when she gets married. 

.

She wears a dove gray sheath and a very comfortable, beautiful pair of shoes that she splurged on after a truly grueling project at work concluded.

.

She wears a mud-splattered pair of shorts, and her favorite red-and-pink striped shirt. 

.

They’re as good as married, they argue, and even though Alice puts up her strongest arguments, they won’t be swayed out of a trip to the courthouse and a nice family dinner. Alice sees the writing on the wall, knows she’s lucky enough to be invited to the courthouse for the ceremony, and cedes the fight.

.

It’s her turn to decide the game, and they’re going to play house. 

Betty is methodical; they can’t play house until they play husband and wife, and so she tells Jughead to stand near the rhododendron bush, tells Archie to stand next to him, and then runs a few feet through the woods to where there are usually some wild bluebells popping up through the dirt. She takes care to avoid the tree with the poison ivy coiled around it, and then rushes back to the treehouse. 

.

On an unseasonably mild afternoon in October, they take a taxi to the courthouse, where they meet their parents, their siblings, and a very small group of their closest friends. They stand before the justice of the peace for a few moments, a few words, and then they sign some paperwork. 

.

She holds the bluebells in her hands, and walks between the trees slowly towards the boys. Jughead rolls his eyes and sighs with all the exaggeration his scrawny self can muster, and Archie looks bashful and bored. 

.

The wedding party gathers for dinner at their favorite restaurant, where a table is set aside for them in a semi-private room. They are not technically in the main dining room and its atmosphere, but they feel they are of it. 

Dinner is fresh, and light, and almost unbearably good. After the entree and before desert, they move around the table in opposing directions, stopping to talk individually to each of their guests, the people they love. 

The wine is tart, the desert is rich, and Betty eats everything, and finishes feeling like she could eat it all over again. 

.

“Betty, come on,” Jughead whines. “This isn’t fun.”

“That’s not what you’re supposed to say, Jug.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say, I’ve never been to a wedding.”

“You say ‘we gather here today.’” 

Jughead is mulish and silent.

“Repeat after me!” Betty implores, and turns to face Archie. He’s a little sunburnt beneath his freckles, and it clashes with his hair.

Jughead repeats after her.

She kisses Archie on the check, and then they all climb the ladder to the treehouse. 

“What next?” Archie asks.

Betty thinks for a moment; she’s unsure. 

Jughead, seeing his moment, suggests they go to the Andrews’ garage, and play MarioKart. Archie looks hopeful, and Betty nods in agreement. She wants to maintain her winning streak. 

.

They leave the restaurant in a car Veronica’s prearranged for them (“We could just grab a taxi,” he argues, but Veronica waves him off.) 

It’s later than they expected it to be. The day has felt very fast, very full. They hold hands, and she rests her head on his shoulder. She feels like she’s only closed her eyes a moment before they are home.

They take the elevator up, he unlocks the door and holds it open for her to enter. She smiles fondly at him in thanks. 

Inside she slips her shoes off by the door, and pads barefoot into the kitchen, grabs a glass and fills it at the sink. Taking a sip, she turns around, leans her hip against the sink, and watches her husband hang his coat. 

He walks toward her with a smile in his eyes, takes the glass from her hand and drinks from it himself.

“Hey, Ms. Cooper. How’re you doing?”

Betty smiles up at him, nods. “I’m good, Mr. Jones; what about you?”

Jughead looks like he’s about to kiss her before—

“Fuck. I should’ve carried you across the threshold.” He shakes his head. “Damn it.” 

Betty stands on her tiptoes to kiss him. 


	7. promise

In order to escape from the overbearing—albeit well-meant—attentions of their father, Jughead bribes JB with the promise of a milkshake at Pop’s to get them both out of the house. 

Jughead understands. FP only gets to host his children a couple times a year, and to see them together even less than that. But their former-gang-leader father has turned into a true marshmallow as his two children entered their twenties. 

Jughead has his theories: sobriety, the casual bowling league he and Fred Andrews participate in down at the Riverdale Ten-pin on Saturdays, whatever it is FP might or might not have going on with Alice Smith, née Cooper. 

The diner isn’t too crowded on a mild Wednesday afternoon in summer, and he and JB slide into a booth with a view of the parking lot. 

Pop himself stops by their table to say hello. Jughead hasn’t visited since Christmas, and JB had been studying abroad in Spain then, so it’s been even longer between visits for her. 

After filling Pop in on their lives for a minute or two, he departs with their order (banana for JB, cookies & cream for Jughead.)

He and JB share theories about FP and Alice while they await their shakes. JB thinks it’s a passing thing, but Jug’s not so sure. He thinks it might have deeper roots they’re unaware of. 

He’s about to expound further on this when he’s interrupted by a bright voice.

“Well well, Jughead Jones the third!”

Jughead whips his head around to meet the sight of Betty Cooper—former Editor of the Blue & Gold, RHS salutatorian, three-time varsity track & field, and the subject of at least eighty-five percent of Jughead’s teenage daydreams—bearing their milkshakes. She’s dressed in a yellow Pop’s uniform, and her hair—he’s floored at the way it feels like he’s time-traveled—is in a ponytail. 

“Betty!” 

Betty slides their milkshakes onto the table (she seems to instinctively know whose is whose) and props her hands on her hips. She cocks her head to the side, smiles in greeting.

“Well, I haven’t seen either of you since…summer after high school graduation?” She looks at Jughead in confirmation.

Jughead nods. “Yeah, yeah, I think that probably sounds right.” 

He observes her as JB tells her about college, about Spain, about their parents’ divorce. Betty nods along, fills in the gaps of the gossip she knows about Alice and FP.

She tells them about her fourth grade students at Riverdale Elementary, about picking up shifts at Pop’s during the summer, and about her niece and nephew, and how she fears they’ll end up in her class, only to terrorize her in the way only family can. 

At some point Jughead realizes she seems to be avoiding his eyes. He’s unsure. As a teenager, this would have shaken all his deepest insecurities, but as an adult he tells himself he’s reading too much into it.

But then Betty turns to him, and it’s like he’s suddenly standing in direct sunlight, and he nearly chokes on the sip of his milkshake he’s just taken. 

“What about you, Jug? What are you up to?”

Swallowing, Jughead gives her the brief overview of his college years, of his internship, of the job that it led to. Betty nods enthusiastically. She leans forward and asks him what he studied.

“BFA in Creative Writing. Minor in English Lit.”

“Oh!—BA in Education, minor in English,” she says with a smile and a gesture of her hand towards her chest (Jug politely refrains from dropping his eyes to where she gestures.)

“So you’re one of those people who could say yes when people asked you if you were going to teach when they heard you were majoring in English?”

Jughead tries not to grin unbearably when he sees he’s made her smile.

Soon the doorbell rings, and Betty waves to the group of three that walks in and ambles to a booth on the other side of the diner. 

“Are you guys going to the fireworks at the river for the Fourth?” she asks. “I hope you are. You should come with me.” 

A hopeful look crosses her face as she bites her lip and looks from JB to Jughead. Jughead nods before JB can fully open her mouth to respond.

“We’ll be there. Yea, sounds fun.” He hopes he doesn’t sound too eager.

Betty beams. She bids them farewell with a “See you later, then” and a little wave.

Jughead watches her go, before turning back to JB and his milkshake. 

Jellybean gives him a look over her straw.

“Fuck off,” he breathes, hyperaware of their underage neighbors. She only cackles.

“I’ll buy you another milkshake if you don’t say anything.”

“A full meal.”

Jughead pauses a moment, and nods in agreement.


	8. cold feet

“This place is frigid.”

Jughead pulls the blanket around his shoulders even tighter, and attempts to burrow deeper into the couch, as though he were a dog and not a seventeen year old boy. 

Betty, wrapped in her own blanket at the other end of the couch, _tsks_ at him. 

“It could be worse.”

Jughead scoffs. “ _Could_ be? It is.” He positively glares at her, and Betty wonders if his bad mood could put off heat. 

“Veronica should have known that her father disconnected the utilities up here in the off-season. We could be warm in our own beds right now, but instead we’re a four-hour drive away. And there’s no food here. This whole trip was idiotic.”

Betty doesn’t have the heart to disagree. What yesterday had seemed like a nice way to spend the weekend, when they were all sitting around a booth at Pop’s, warmly ensconced away from the wet roads and slushy sidewalks, has turned into a vastly different reality. 

A semi-covert overnight at the Lodge Lodge was the kind of teenage behavior Betty felt like she was running out of chances to have. Senior year was zooming by, college applications had flown the coop, and some of their classmates were already receiving their early acceptances. 

What they hadn’t expected was for the Lodge Lodge to be in the middle of a paused renovation. 

The Lodges had decided to winter in warmer climes this year (Veronica voluntarily abstaining in order to spend more time on “schoolwork,” as she told her mother, but actually with Archie, as she informed Betty.) As such, Hermione Lodge had decided to make some updates to their cozy winter chalet (“ _Cozy_? My trailer could fit in this living room.”) 

And so they’d found themselves a bit stuck. Only one of the bedrooms was properly made up (in that it _had_ a bed), and Betty had insisted Veronica and Archie take it, arguing the couches currently under drop cloths in the main room would suit her and Jughead just fine. Indeed, the sofas were vast; one of them was larger than the full-size mattress in her bedroom back in Riverdale. At this generosity, Jughead had narrowed his eyes at her and moved towards the fireplace, asking Veronica where he could find matches.

Veronica and Archie had quietly disappeared at some point. Betty found a pile of blankets in a closet next to the bathroom, a case of—thankfully not frozen—plastic bottles of water in the kitchen, and brought a few of each into the living room, where Jughead had kept himself busy by starting a fire. 

It did spread some warmth into the room—alas, not enough that they could do anything but ensconce themselves in blankets. 

“I feel dehydrated.”

Shaken out of her thoughts, Betty turns to Jughead. His head and the beanie atop it poke out from the blanket as though disembodied. 

“It’s probably the fire.” She tips her chin towards the water bottles on the table in front of them. 

Jughead eyes the bottles from his perch.

“I can’t reach.”

“Pssh—Jug. Unwrap yourself.”

“No _oo_. It’s too cold. I can’t.”

“Forsythe.”

“Who’s Forsythe?”

“Jughead!”

“Please? You’re closer.”

Betty blinks at him. He blinks back. He smiles. She shakes her head at him. He rolls his eyes.

“Fine, fine,” he cedes. He snakes an arm out ( _his arms are so long,_ she thinks), tosses a bottle to Betty, landing it approximately on the expanse of blanket that covers her lap, before taking one for himself. 

“Thank you.”

Taking a sip, he grunts a _you’re welcome_. 

Betty watches him out of the corner of her eye. He stares into the fire, and the look on his face feels familiar. Betty thinks it’s probably reflected in her own expression. They’re running out of time. She’s running out of time. 

“Hey,” she says softly. 

Jughead turns his head, raises his eyebrows.

“Gimme your legs.”

Jughead unfolds beneath the blanket, stretches his feet down the couch towards her. Underneath her own blanket, she places her wool-socked feet on top of his. She smiles at him, and he blushes. She doesn’t try to convince herself it’s just the fire. 


	9. jacket

Jughead has torn the room apart.

He’s tried the closet under the stairs, the cellar, the garage. He’s almost certain it’s not back at the trailer, but if it were, he thinks he’d likely write it off as a lost cause rather than hunt it down.

But he hasn’t been back to the trailer for a couple of weeks, and he’s certain he was wearing that sherpa—his oldest coat, the one most threadbare and faded—no less than four days ago. _Maybe_ five. 

He’s trying the bedroom closet again when he hears the telltale sounds of either a small earthquake or Archie, arriving home from football practice and dumping his equipment onto the floor by the stairs, then stomping down the hall and into the kitchen. 

Giving Archie’s bedroom another sweep of the eyes, he takes off down the stairs two-at-a-hop, swings around the newel post at the bottom and propels himself into the kitchen, where Archie has his head in the fridge.

“You seen my jacket?”

Archie’s head pops into view, mouth full with last night’s cold leftovers, and throws Jughead a questioning raise of his eyebrows.

“The really light one, blue.” Jughead clarifies. “I can’t find it.”

Archie shrugs, and swallows. “Sorry, man, nope. 

The kitchen door swings open, and the two pizza boxes Fred carries in distract Jughead from his search.

.

He doesn’t think much more of it until later, when he’s puttering around Archie’s room, nose deep in _The Lord of the Flies_ , delaying the moment he inevitably crashes out on the air mattress.

Archie had gone for an evening run, a decision Jughead chose not to examine too closely. Sharing a bedroom with your best friend at sixteen, in Jughead’s experience, was _very_ different from the innumerable times they’d shared this very bedroom as children.

As kids, video games, board games, stupid games of truth or dare were the norm. Occasionally even Betty would join them, if Alice was especially busy at the Register and feeling a little more lenient about her endless rules. 

Thoughts of Betty inevitably guide Jughead’s eyes to the window across the way, where he notices that Betty’s desk light remains alight. The room’s occupant herself sits: posture as exemplary as ever, head bent low over a textbook, pen moving rapidly over a notebook. 

Jughead can’t stop himself from smiling as he watches her. Betty’s room—Betty’s _house_ —had always been a mystery to both he and Archie as children. Viewed from a distance, but never entered. Alice Cooper did not like little boys, and she probably liked teenage boys even less—but that hadn’t stopped Jughead from borrowing Fred’s ladder from the garage and climbing into Betty’s bedroom. 

He’d even since charmed his way in through the front door more than once, with claims of “study dates,” in which he and Betty, ears alert to the sound of Alice moving about the house, would surreptitiously kiss until Jughead’s ears burned, Betty’s cheeks were red, and they both turned back to their books, breathing heavily. 

The last time this had happened, Betty had slipped her hand around to the small of Jughead’s back and _under_ the hem of his shirt, which would likely have caused him to choke on his own tongue, had it not been in Betty’s mouth at that very moment. 

As it was, they quickly broke apart, for Alice’s heels had sounded upon the hardwood of the entry (resonating as it did with noticeable difference from the low-pile carpet of the living room or the slate tile of the mudroom.)

Jughead had quickly slumped off of Betty’s bed and onto the floor where his books were spread, as Betty scooted backwards to lean against her headboard. Alice did not materialize in Betty’s doorway; instead, her footsteps retreated back to the kitchen as he listened carefully, trying to breathe quietly and straining his ears over the sound of his own heartbeat. 

He still felt the warmth of Betty’s hand on his back, and went to shrug off his coat—the very coat Jughead now notices hangs off the back of Betty’s desk chair. 

Betty closes her notebook and stands. She runs her fingers over the soft denim of the coat’s shoulder. Her hand lingers, and Jughead watches as she disappears slowly out of the circle cast by the lamplight.


	10. love/dating

It’s not until the second time that Veronica walks in on Betty and Jughead in an indiscretion that Betty accedes to her best friend that there _might_ be something going on between the two of them. 

But she manages to avoid Veronica successfully for a full five days the first time. Classes, extracurriculars, her internship, and her work study hours at the campus library keep her busy and out of their off-campus apartment for most, if not all, of what might be designated waking hours. 

Betty doesn’t mean for it to happen the first time. She’d planned specifically to avoid it, in fact. 

She’d met Veronica for mid-morning coffees at The Wit’s End, after Veronica’s econ class and before Betty’s Virginia Woolf seminar. Lately their friendship had consisted of passing each other on the way in or out of the bathroom or the front door, and Betty felt isolated. She’d come early to campus just to catch up with her best friend, and in the course of their conversation learned that Veronica had a date that evening, a third date with Reggie Mantle—and that if things went the way Veronica wanted them to, she wasn’t planning on spending the night at their apartment.

Betty filed this information away for later use—said later use arriving rather soon afterwards, when she sat down next to Jughead Jones in seminar a mere nine minutes after parting ways with Veronica. 

Betty, therefore, was understandably shocked when the lock to their apartment clicked, the door swung open, and in swept Veronica—only to stop short at seeing Jughead, sans shirt, on the couch—with an equally shirtless Betty straddling his lap. 

Once was a coincidence, to be laughed at, over another coffee.

Twice was perhaps a little more unfortunate. 

It was the morning after the second incident that Betty knew a conversation could no longer be delayed.

After Jughead left (earlier than he typically awoke, she knew, specifically to avoid a direct interrogation from Veronica), Betty lay in bed awake, delaying the inevitable. She wanted to know what she thought before she was confronted by questions.

And so when she padded barefoot into the kitchen, she felt a little closer to her own heart, or so she thought.

Veronica turned from the cappuccino machine looking like the cat that caught the canary. 

“Bettykins.”

Betty slid onto a barstool at the breakfast bar and narrowed her eyes at her friend. 

“Veronica. Good morning. How did you sleep?”

Veronica placed a perfectly brewed cappuccino in front of Betty and clasped her hands together. 

“Not as well as I hope _you_ did, bellissima.”

Betty rolled her eyes, but took a sip from her coffee. “ _Okay_ , let’s not go crazy.”

Veronica squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head with enthusiasm.

“No, no, Elizabeth. Please. Please let me have this moment. I’m so proud.”

Betty didn’t stop herself from releasing an exaggerated sigh and looked towards the ceiling. 

“ _Fine_. Go ahead.”

“Is this a _thing_?” Veronica leaned forward, resting her elbows on the counter, chin in hands, as Betty sipped her coffee.

“It’s…something,” she responded lamely. 

Veronica nodded sagely. 

“I see, I see. 

Betty wondered if she’d somehow gotten off easy, if that was it, if she’d been over-anticipating this very conversation.

But then Veronica dropped a bomb.

“You love him.”

Betty sputtered through the froth of her coffee, coughing.

“ _Excuse_ me?”

Veronica shook her head and shrugged.

“You’re not casual, Betty. I can tell these things, trust me.”

Betty struggled to summon words, and could only widen her eyes at Veronica, mouth agape.

Veronica nodded patiently. After a few moments, Betty averted her eyes, stared into her coffee. 

“Shit.” She met Veronica’s eye. “You might be right.”


	11. wrong person + wedding/warm (I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a 100-word drabble (prompt "wrong person") and a longer prompt (wedding/warm) which continues the story.

Betty brings him to the wedding as her plus one. As maid of honor, she doesn’t want to be the only member of the bridal party flying solo. He’s blonde and tall, gainfully employed—everything Alice Cooper would approve.

She enters the ballroom (as _extensively_ rehearsed) on the arm of the best man. _Fancy meeting you here_. It’s cliche, but her smile feels easy. He looks different, but she can’t place it.

When Mr. Blonde-and-Tall leads her onto the floor after the first dance, she catches Best Man’s eye. She realizes she’s never seen him without the hat for this long.

.

As they retreat from the dance floor, Mr. Blonde-and-Tall offers to grab Betty a refill. Betty watches him retreat with her order (“Tom Collins, please.”) and starts to pick her way through the maze of the guests to the head table, where the only occupants left of the wedding party and the family are Jughead and Archie’s mother Mary—who Betty had only interacted with a handful of times, but who she found to be extremely kind, appeared to truly adore her son, and had the most civil relationship with her ex-husband of anyone Betty had ever met. **  
**

(Betty’s own parents had divorced when she was in high school. The familial tension and less-than-civil discourse had persisted well into her adulthood, but Betty had finally managed to gain a toehold of distance, maintaining stronger boundaries with both her parents, and no longer felt pressured into being their go-between. Therapy helped.)

Mary and Jughead appear to be deep in an engaging conversation, Mary’s hand on his shoulder, his head inclined slightly towards her, as though attempting to better make out her speech in the din of the ballroom.

Betty moves towards her assigned seat, but Jughead catches her eyes. He waves her over, and Mary smiles in encouragement. 

“Have a nice spin?” Mary asks, smiling at her, and Betty nods with a little shrug.

“It’s nice to dance. I enjoy it.”

Mary nods and gestures her hand toward Jughead. “I agree! But try to convince this one for me.”

Betty smiles as Jughead feigns offense. 

“I thought we were having a nice conversation!” He gestures a thumb behind him towards the dance floor. “I’m more than happy to step up, Mary, especially for you!” 

Mary nods and laughs, pats his shoulder.

“I know, but my usual dance partner has arrived to rescue me.” She raises her eyebrows, and Betty and Jughead both turn to see Fred Andrews, beside the dance floor, raising his own eyebrows in their direction. Mary seems to take this as her cue, and stands, hand squeezing Jughead’s shoulder.

“You should dance with Betty though.” 

Before Jughead can respond, Mary’s hand is on Betty’s shoulder, gently pushing her towards him. Betty is caught off-guard; her cheeks burn. 

“Go on, be a gentleman. You heard her, she likes to dance!” 

Jughead sputters, but to Betty’s eye he appears amused, only feigning incredulity to make Mary smile. 

“Hop to.” Mary points between the two of them, gives them a little wave, and heads in the direction of Mr. Andrews. 

Betty finally meets Jughead’s eye, just as the laugh appears to fade from them. He stands, holds out his hand to her, and says—

“Well, it’s your funeral.”

Betty is surprised to feel herself laugh. “That sounds so promising.” She slaps her hand into Jughead’s, and allows him to lead her back onto the floor.

“Well, I’ll try to keep the flailing to a minimum. We’re lucky it’s a slow jam.” He throws her a grin, and she feels her face instinctively match it.

His hand finds its place on the small of her back, and Betty suppresses a chill. Maybe the venue has turned the heat down early to counteract the crowd of moving bodies producing inevitable heat. 

Her hand slots into Jughead’s, and then they are dancing. 

It’s a gentle sway. As an eight-year-old, Betty’s mother had signed her daughter up for ballroom dance classes for three months, in hopes that Betty might have some natural talent on the competitive circuit. That had been three months of stiff posture, counting steps, and the sharp elbows of the eight-year-old boys with whom she partnered. Betty had finally been able to escape with the onset of soccer season. 

School dances had been much the same, merely with the added benefit of sweaty palms and acne scars. 

This feels different, though. This feels comfortable. This was like a good hug. 

“You liar. This isn’t that bad.” 

Jughead grins in response, looks down at their feet. “It’s still early; you’re lucky those are closed-toe.”

His eyes go wide, as though he’s just remembered something.

“Where’s your date?”

_Oh_ , Betty remembers. _Right_. Swinging her eyes about the room, they land on Mr. Blonde-and-Tall, two drinks in hand, seemingly deep in conversation with both Mary and Fred.

“Looks like he’s busy.” 

Jughead nods in agreement, and they both watch as her date places the two cocktails onto the nearest high-top, crosses his arms, and appears to lean into his conversation with the Andrews.

Betty turns her gaze back to Jughead, newly aware of how close they are.

Jughead seems to be staring at a spot on her clavicle until suddenly his eyes rise to meet hers—and Betty feels like she’s missed a breath.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” he asks, and her cheeks feel warm. She nods.


	12. 4 am cuddle (II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This continues the story from the previous chapter (wrong person + wedding/warm).

Jughead thinks he might willingly have spent the rest of the evening in the chilly courtyard of the hotel, if it meant talking to Betty. **  
**

He is sorely disappointed, therefore, when the newly christened Veronica Lodge-Andrews swoops upon them in a cloud of silvery white, a loud _“There you are!”_ to both of them, and drags them off to what is their second photo session of the wedding. 

A second photo session sounded like a scam to Jughead, but Veronica had truly planned for all eventualities, and wanted to document every moment of her nuptials, especially the candid ones—and she demanded those candids include her Maid of Honor and her groom’s Best Man. 

(“Aren’t candids supposed to be…candid?” Jughead tried to reason, to which Veronica had not even deigned to respond.) 

Jughead is not fond of crowded events on a normal day, but exceptions are made when one’s oldest and dearest friend asks you to stand as Best Man at his wedding. It’s merely unfortunate that Archie has married someone like Veronica, who never held even a Super Bowl viewing party without an extensively vetted guest list. 

Jughead likes Veronica, very much actually. She’s…a lot, at times—but she’s also direct, no bullshit, and she somehow manages to focus Archie’s chaotic brain like nothing else Jughead has ever witnessed. She also loves Archie, and since Archie is the closest he’s ever had to a brother, he’s willing to put up with the things about her that feel antithetical to his own personality.

Also, her best friend is both the most gorgeous woman Jughead has ever seen and someone he is shocked— _shocked_ —appears to be interested in him, too. He thinks. He has an inkling. There’s a sense of something there. 

Jughead’s almost positive, especially after they spend nearly an hour on the patio before Veronica reclaims them. Their conversation feels comfortable, but intellectually challenging. Jughead is not a person prone to feeling comfortable with strangers. But he feels like Betty is no longer a stranger, not after they’ve spent months attending pre-wedding events alongside one another, forced into partnership by virtue of their roles. Maybe they can be friends. Maybe they can be more than friends. 

But there’s the question of her date. This…tall, all-American… _guy_. Visually, he’s Betty’s perfect counterpart. They should sell them as a matching set. 

But then—she’d danced with him. She’d sat with him in the courtyard; she’d let him drape his jacket over her shoulders when he noticed her shiver in the cold. She’d also refused his offer to lead her back into the warmth of the ballroom. He wants to cross paths with her again, regardless of the presence of Mr. Perfect. 

.

But he doesn’t get another moment. The wedding carries on, and he doesn’t get the chance to spend any further time with her. 

Mary—appearing clairvoyant, as she occasionally did—had given him the perfect lay-up and excuse to interact with Betty, and it had worked, until it didn’t.

The wedding winds down, as weddings usually do. There are Irish exits; there are long, lengthy goodbyes, where guests who say their farewells end up spending another half hour or two in conversation; there are three incredibly drunk groomsmen swaying in a cluster at the center of the dance floor to Semisonic’s _Closing Time_ , the DJ beginning to pack up his equipment. Veronica and Archie disappeared hours ago. 

Jughead avoids his fellow groomsmen, and surveys the dwindling numbers of the ballroom. He tells himself he’s not looking for a glint of gold, but he’s also aware enough to recognize disappointment when he doesn’t see it. He skirts the dance floor, and retreats toward the lobby, toward the elevators that will lead him to his hotel room.

.

But then he gets a text from Betty.

_I still have your jacket! You should come get it._

Jughead tells himself not to hope, but Betty sends another text with her room number, and before he can argue himself out of it, he responds with a _be right there_.

The door to room 415 swings open to reveal her, still in her bridesmaid’s dress, eyes bright, hair now trailing over her shoulders. She smiles at him, and Jughead feels a ball of warmth swell under his lungs.

“Hi!” She says cheerfully.

“Hi,” he responds. Internally he chides himself, _very smooth_ , but tries to shake it off. “You have my coat?”

Betty nods, but doesn’t move from the doorframe. “Yes, yes I have your coat.”

Jughead nods in response, and they are silent. 

He tells himself not to ask, it’s a bad idea, it’s stupid, but—

“Where’s…I’m sorry, I don’t know his name?”

Betty cocks her head, and something flashes in her eyes. “Oh—he left hours ago.”

Jughead feels a glimmer of something like hope.

“Oh,” he responds, and nods his head. Betty nods as well, and there they stand, nodding at one another. The moment feels primed to descend into awkwardness, before Betty bursts out—

“He’s just a friend. Well—he’s not my friend, he was just my date. Just…my plus one.” She purses her lips into a thin line, and they pale with the pressure.

“O-oh.” Jughead repeats. 

“Well. You didn’t come here to cuddle, I’m assuming.” A grin spreads slowly over her face, she taps her nails against the doorframe. She’s no longer wearing her heels, and Jughead feels like he’s leaning over her. 

He coughs a laugh and his eyes feel glued to the green of her’s. He shakes his head.

“Honestly, I wouldn’t say no to that—but no. No.”

She steps backwards, and he steps forward, over the threshold, and into her hotel room.


	13. wedding (III)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continues the narrative of the previous two chapters.

Betty does not jump into bed with people she’s just met. **  
**

She _hasn’t_ just met Jughead. They’ve spent countless hours together over the course of the past few months, courtesy of Veronica’s carefully scheduled wedding calendar. 

They just haven’t dated, and that’s what’s different. 

And they don’t _jump_ into bed—in fact they miss it entirely, because they’re glued at the mouth, Betty’s eyes are closed (she assumes his are, too), and Jughead is pushing her deeper into her hotel room, and when the backs of her knees hit something solid she lets herself fall backwards—only to slide off the corner of her bed, tumbling to the floor, bringing Jughead down on top of her. 

Luckily, after quick assessment, the physical damage is deemed to be minimal, they cease their laughter. Soon chuckles become moans, and at least one very loud gasp. 

(Betty’s always had cold hands, but Jughead insists he really doesn’t mind. She’s inclined to believe him.) 

.

They eventually make it to the bed.

.

There’s some light dozing (Betty has never slept well in hotel rooms), and she awakens to the sound of the bathroom door. 

She opens her eyes and squints against the soft gray light that curls around the closed drapes, turns her head to see Jughead emerging from the small hallway that leads to both the door and the bathroom. His eyes brighten when he notices she’s awake. 

“Hi,” he smiles at her as he slides back into the sheets of the bed, next to her, and Betty’s cheeks flush, watching his gaze trail over her naked back. She realizes she doesn’t hate the feeling, and she doesn’t feel exposed. 

She dips her chin into the pillow to hide her grin. She’s a little chilly, and so she tucks her arms under her chest and stomach, smiles back at him with a “Hello.” 

“Are you cold?” 

She shrugs a little, makes a non-committal noise at the back of her throat. She feels her own fingers where they press against her collar bone, her forearms warm between her breasts. 

Jughead watches her face for a moment. 

Slowly, and with what appears to be great care, he climbs over her. He notches his chin into her throat, his face next to her own. His chest to her back, his arms at her sides, the pressure and warmth of his body against her own. 

Betty closes her eyes. 

.

Veronica had once told Betty that she loved wedding sex, that she found it hopeful. Betty’s not sure she’d understood what Veronica had meant until now.


	14. dumped/forgotten

Jughead is at least eight cookies into the night when Veronica shows up. 

As is typical, she swans into the apartment like she owns the place. The sheer contrast between her perfectly tailored outfit and the pig sty-like conditions of his living room nearly inspires him to put pen to paper—metaphorically speaking—but his laptop is at the other end of the coffee table and he’s not sure he has enough in him to summon the energy to sit up and reach for it.

He regrets giving her a set of keys that one time. He should have let his plants die, he thinks. They ended up dying on his own watch anyway. 

Veronica stops short of the couch where he lays sprawled, still in his flannel pajama pants. She surveys the landscape, distaste transparently evident across her face. She huffs an exaggerated sigh, props her hands on her hips, and finally meets his glare with her own.

“Hey. What’s up?” he asks with great nonchalance, and Veronica’s exasperation only grows.

“Oh please.” She cocks her hip and narrows her eyes. “This place is a mess,” she points out with a shake of her head.

Jughead sighs, crosses his ankles over one another on the arm of the couch. Veronica eyes his socks suspiciously.

“I never thought I deserved love, and now I know it for real,” he muses, a declaration that seems to aggravate Veronica still further. 

“Are you _still_ moping over her?” She picks her way around his feet, side-steps the pizza box on the edge of the coffee table. 

“This is more about your article getting punted, isn’t it? Jug, that happens, I know you put a lot of work into it, but que sera—put it on the back burner and return to it later. No work is wasted.” 

Jughead closes his eyes and leans his head back against the couch. 

“It’s just a shit-show. I worked for five months on that thing. What if it gets entirely forgotten? And then I got dumped.”

Veronica considers the armchair, seems to decide against sitting.

“Jughead, you drifted.” She holds out a placating hand as though to further her point. “You two were hardly spending any time together towards the end, Archie and I _both_ saw that. Plus, remember Fire Island? She was _weird_ that weekend. The writing was on the wall. You even said so when we got back. She just happened to be the one to pull the trigger.” She widens her eyes at him in emphasis. “Because you’re a slug.” 

Jughead scrunches his nose and covers his eyes with his hand. He could be napping right now, but there’s a buzz in his ear. He listens as Veronica moves further about the room.

“You should get out, come with us tonight—we’re getting dinner. You need to get out.” 

Jughead realizes that feigning sleep will not be a successful tactic; he sits up suddenly, swinging his legs off the couch and standing. He avoids her and retreats towards his kitchenette. He can sense Veronica’s glare burning holes in his t-shirt through the pass-through window between the kitchen and his living room.

“Also my friend Betty’s coming, I thought you might like to know.”

Jughead nearly starts, but catches himself. 

With as much casual attitude as he can muster, he opens the fridge and tries to busy himself exploring the five items he appears to have left inside, and asks, “Betty…Cooper? That one?”

“Mhm,” hums Veronica, and Jughead can tell from her tone she isn’t fooled by his act. “Kevin’s bringing her, she’s in the city for the weekend. But I do hear she’s been interviewing locally, so…”

Jughead backs away from his fridge, half-gallon of (likely expired) milk in hand. He places it on the counter, turns around to face Veronica again, crossing his arms and leaning against the sink. 

“I’ll give you twenty minutes to shower and shave,” she offers. It feels more like a command. 

Jughead bobs his head back and forth, as though he is weighing his options. Veronica remains unconvinced.

“Oh, please! You think she’s amazing.”

He raises a hand to stay her words, and nods. 

“That’s… not untrue. But she’s also worth more than a rebound.” 

“You’re damn right she is. Glad we’re on the same page. Now go shower; Smithers is double-parked.” 

Jughead narrows his eyes at her, turns, and retreats into his bathroom.


	15. vanished

Betty keeps a folder on her Google Drive titled _*gaslighting?? work_. Inside it there are screenshots of Slack messages from her coworker. 

They’re coworkers; they have the same title, and yet occasionally the DMs he sends her about the project they’re currently managing ( _co-managing_ ) have given her pause. 

This is nothing new to Betty, having been in the post-college workforce for nigh on ten years, but she thought she was immune to a certain amount of bullshit. To find herself bothered by this, now? She’s almost more upset at being annoyed than she is actually annoyed. 

All of this she lays out onto her tiny kitchen island late on a Friday afternoon, while Jughead stands at the stove, in charge of producing their shared dinner (cacio e pepe, from what Betty can observe over the rim of her wine glass, pausing in her monologue to take a sip. There’s a block of pecorino partially unwrapped on the counter.) 

Jughead works Thursdays and Fridays from home, and thus takes charge of meals on those days. During the rest of the week, they collaborate—unless Betty is interested in trying out a new recipe, or desires the contradictory diversion of focused-mindlessness that cooking can bring. 

“We have different responsibilities, and different skill sets, and… I know it’s hard to notice when you’re being gaslit because that’s the point of gaslighting, and maybe I just don’t like how he said it, his ‘ _expectations_ ’ of me.” She trails off, staring into her wine glass. “They probably wouldn’t notice if I weren’t even there.”

Jughead looks up from the stove top, and the face he gives her betrays his evident doubt at this statement. 

“That’s bullshit,” he shakes his head. “They’d be a mess.” 

He moves to drain the spaghetti at the sink, and Betty watches him. 

“You’ve been there for nearly five years, and they’ve put a certain amount of investment into keeping you. They value you even if this asshole…is an asshole,” he finishes lamely, shaking the colander to drain it more thoroughly. 

He turns his body toward her and leans his hip against the sink, reaches for his own wine glass where it sits on the counter. 

“You work very hard. You’re good at your job,” he points his index finger at her in emphasis, “and you recognize where you are not good at your job, and do the work to try to compensate for that and get better. He’s been around, what, less than three years?”

“Two.” 

Jughead waves his hand.

“Two! There’s a level of institutional knowledge you carry that he…just does not.” His palm waves wide in an arc, and bizarrely she imagines him painting the air with her resume. She wonders at the images her brain sometimes supplies her with, wonders if it’s the wine, but just as quickly knows it isn’t.

Jughead continues.

“You also have evidence of your value to them, because you’ve literally never had anything but glowing evaluations.” He replaces the wine glass on the counter, moves to carry the colander back towards the stove top. 

“It’s normal to doubt yourself, but you also need to remind yourself of what actual evidence you have towards how good you are.” 

He empties the drained pasta back into the pot, looks back at her as he shakes a few resistant threads of spaghetti out of the sieve. 

“But I’ll do it, too.” 

Betty bites her lip. She keeps his gaze. 

“You forgot to save the pasta water,” she points out. 

Jughead exhales forcefully and lets his head fall backwards, closing his eyes at the ceiling. 

“Why didn’t you stop me?”

Betty smiles at him, runs her fingers around the base of her wine glass, rests her chin into her palm.

“Because you were saying nice things about me.” 

Jughead’s eyes open and he smiles at her.


	16. look

He can’t find his goddamn hat.

(“Don’t swear,” his mother tells him, sliding a plate of bacon onto the kitchen table and pinching his ear lobe between her pointer and index fingers.

“Goddamn isn’t swearing, dad says it,” he argues, pulling his head away from her hand. His mother tells him he’s not his father.)

Seventh grade is enough of a hellscape already, he does not need to add a bad haircut to its litany of indignities. 

He’d protested only half-heartedly when his mother had corralled him after his shower the evening before. 

She’d pulled a chair under the overhead light of the kitchen, and he’d wrapped his still-damp bath towel around his shoulders while Jellybean watched. 

He knew from experience that his mother—if perhaps a better amateur hairdresser than others around the trailer park, in his casual observation—still had a habit of overzealousness with her clippers. 

And now he was going to be late for school, and he hadn’t been able to find his hat. 

“Where did you have it last?” Jellybean had asked unhelpfully, and Jughead had merely thrown her an icy glare before his mother was ushering him out the door, insisting he not incur another tardy.

Halfway through his trudge to Riverdale Junior High he finally catches up with Archie. He replicates the glower he’d given Jellybean. It’s far more effective, because Archie merely suppresses a grin and asks Jughead if he’d mind sharing some of the harder answers on their math homework. 

Jughead keeps his head ducked for the rest of their walk, kicking pebbles ahead of them with focus as the conversation shifts towards Archie’s progress in _Madden 25_. 

Jughead spends the rest of the morning attempting to exude his strongest _fuck-off_ attitude out towards the world (his mother can’t tell him not to swear if he only says it in his head, he thinks), and it seems to work. 

But then, most people don’t bother Jughead generally. He certainly doesn’t face the kind of ridicule from the popular kids that someone like Dilton Doiley does, with his enthusiasm in science class and insistence on bringing out his _Magic the Gathering_ cards during lunch. 

(Jughead’s dabbled, of course, but he’s not enough of an idiot to do that in front of Reggie Mantle.)

But then: fifth period.

He doesn’t turn his gaze from where he’s glued it to the blackboard, arms crossed across his chest, so he doesn’t see Betty slide into the desk next to him so much as he senses her presence.

(Betty’s the first person to really have what Jughead thought writers were talking about when they said someone had _presence_. He’s still not really sure how to define it, or write about it himself, but he thinks he sort of gets it.)

The back of his (newly naked) neck prickles, and he resists turning to look at her until he can’t anymore.

Betty is, as ever, perfectly groomed—ponytail high, Converse spotless, sweater completely free of fabric-pills.

(Archie’d once told him Mrs. Cooper had a little tool that cut pills off sweaters, and the very existence of such an object had sent Jughead down an internet spiral, spending hours one evening reading Buzzfeed lists of odd-but-useful tools, until his mom had told him he’d ruin his eyes looking at his computer screen in the dark, and sent him to bed.)

He finally meets Betty’s eyes, and she smiles at him.

His eyebrows scrunch together at that. 

“ _What_? Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks, knowing Betty probably doesn’t deserve the edge in his voice, the one he’d use on _other_ people, people who weren’t Betty, who weren’t kind like she was. 

“I like your haircut,” she says, still smiling at him, as she pulls her pencil case out of her backpack and performs the rituals she always does before a class: aligning her pens at the top of her desk, textbook to the left, notebook folded back on itself to the right. 

She poises her pencil at the top of a clean page, pens the date in the upper-right corner. 

She smiles at him again. The bell rings and final stragglers rush in, Mrs. Callahan begins to talk over the din of the room, and he feels goosebumps rise on his forearms.

He averts his eyes from her’s, looks back down at his desk.

“Thanks,” he says quietly.


End file.
